Volume 1, No. 1 Tree Smith Benedikt – Editor
The Jewish Poets Collective Journal exists to promote the works of Jewish poets and is proudly, unapologetically, Jewish. Its mission is to amplify diverse Jewish perspectives and foster an inclusive environment where the personal and the universal meet.
Poetry about the sacred and the secular, the ancient and the ever present Now, are all welcome here.
Welcome to the inaugural issue of The Jewish Poets Collective Journal. I’m incredibly proud to present this first issue, overflowing with luminous works by thirty Jewish poets residing in the United States, Israel, England and Japan. My hope is that readers will take their time over the spring and summer months to savor each poem.
I would like to thank Samantha Landau, Om Green and Tzivia Gover for their advice and help. I’m grateful for your input and support.
Please note that while each page has a mobile viewing link, this journal is formatted for desktop and laptop viewing, and the poems may not always look as the poet intended on a mobile device.
Jessica Elisheva Emerson‘s debut novel Olive Days was published by Counterpoint Press in Fall 2024, is the winner of the GLCA New Writers Awards, a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize’s Art Seidenbaum Award in first fiction (winner announced in April), longlisted for the Reading the West Award for debut fiction (winner announced in May), and a 2025 Sophie Brody Medal Award Notable Book. Her stories and poems have been published in numerous journals and she’s a produced playwright. She lives with her husband and children in the Sonoran Desert.
Deborah Leipziger is an author, poet, and advisor on sustainability. Born in Brazil, Ms. Leipziger is the author of several books on sustainability and human rights. Her collection of poems, Story & Bone, was published in 2023 by Lily Poetry Review Books. Her work appears in numerous anthologies, including Tree Lines: 21st Century American Poems. Her poems have been published in ten countries in such magazines as Revista Cardenal, Inkwell, The Bombay Literary Magazine, and Salamander. She is currently working on a Lexicon of Change, which shares the vocabulary we need for social and environmental transformation. She has had residencies at T S Eliot House and received grants from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, the Brookline Commission for the Arts, and the Jewish Arts Collaborative. Deborah is part of the 2025-2026 cohort of the Jews of the Americas Fellowship at Brandeis University. Deborah has been a Poet-in-Residence at the Vilna Shul, a cultural center in Boston.
Carly Sachs is the author of the steam sequence (Washington Writers’ Publishing House 2006) and Descendants of Eve (Blue Lyra Press, 2020).She is the editor of the why and later (Deep Cleveland Press, 2007), a collection of poems about rape and assault. Her poems and stories have been included in The Best American Poetry series and read on NPR’s Selected Shorts. Recent work has appeared in the Mid-Atlantic Review, the At the Well blog, and the Earth Etudes for Elul project. When not writing, you can find Carly teaching yoga or baking with her daughter. She lives in Lexington, KY.
Jeff Schwartz grew up in Ohio and lives in Connecticut, where he has taught for the last 35 years. His first collection was published by Alice James Books and recent poems appear in the Berru Poetry Series, Hanging Loose, Naugatuck River Review, Verklempt, and elsewhere. His chapbook, Small Talk, is due in 2025. He also writes frequently on student-centered learning.
Tzivia Gover is an award-winning author of seven books including Dreaming on the Page: Tap into Your Midnight Mind to Supercharge Your Writing. Her poetry has been published in dozens of journals and anthologies including The Mom Egg Review, The Naugatuck River Review, Pensive, The Other Journal, Ritualwell and Lilith Magazine, among others. She shares her poems and translations about the first Hebrew Matriarch, Sarah at The Life of H: Sarah, Reimagined. Her nonfiction has appeared in the New York Times, the Boston Globe, Creative Nonfiction, and more. Tzivia earned her MFA in writing from Columbia University and she lives in western Massachusetts.
Heidi Joffe(M.Ed.) is a poet and multimedia artist who crafts with fibers, clay, and words. She writes essays and screenplays, but poetry is her sustenance. Her publication homes include Panoply, The Opiate, Sheila-Na-Gig, Gyroscope, Pine, Mountain Sand and Gravel. She is currently completing an MFA at Pacific University.
Carol Dorf has received fellowships from the Hawthornden Foundation, Zoeglossia, and the Napa Valley Writers’ Conference, as well as “Best of the Net” and “Best Microfiction” nominations.. Their writing appears on the Poetry Foundation website, in several chapbooks, and in journals that include “Judith,” “Shofar,” “The Reform Jewish Quarterly,” “Pleiades,” “About Place,” “Cutthroat,” “Braving the Body,” “The Mom Egg,” “American Stories,” “Five South,” “YesYesPoetry,” and “Scientific American.” Founding poetry editor of Talking Writing, they taught math and writing in Berkeley USD, as well as at museums and conferences.
Website: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/carol-dorf
Insta: cdorf1
Lauren Martin is a psychotherapist, poet, and a devoted Ìyânífá. Born in Boston and spending many years in New York and Paris, she currently lives in Oakland, California. Lauren studied psychology, photography and poetry at Sarah Lawrence College. She spent years writing without submitting her work due to a long shamanic journey, which led her to both Ifá, and to the writing of several books (including this collection of poems.) Night of the Hawk (SheWrites Press, 2024), reflects a deeply personal experience of illness, isolation and true shamanism. Night of the Hawk is a 2024 BookFest winner and won a 2024 Zibby Award for Best Book for the Traveler.
Tali Himmel Rothstein was raised in Israel and New Jersey. She received her MFA in Genre Fiction and Poetry from Western Colorado University. Tali’s poetry circles around themes of generational trauma, resilience, and the healing power of nature. She currently resides in Seattle, Washington, with her spouse, six children and cat. You can find her writing about parenting and writing at railwaywriter.com or on Instagram @railwaywriter.
Rachel Becker’s poetry appears or is forthcoming in journals including North American Review, Post Road, Poetry South, and RHINO. She is also a poetry editor for Porcupine Literary and the recipient of a Poet and Author Fellowship from the Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing. She lives in Boston.
A native of Chicago, Miriam Aroner has lived in the SF Bay Area most of her adult life. She has worked as a librarian in private and university libraries, including Tel Aviv University. She has published several children’s books, one of which won a National Jewish Book Award, and poems in print and online. She enjoys reading in all genres except romance and science fiction, writing (when it goes well), and travel. Her grown children like to travel with her because she always wants to see what’s around the corner, over the hill and beyond.
REBECCA BAT ZE’EV lives in England with her husband and two children. She writes about Judaism, motherhood, joy, and loss.
Miriam Laufer writes to connect with humans and other sentient species. She is an avid reader of speculative fiction, poetry, and anything her book clubs are reading. She holds an MA in Humanities from the University of Chicago and has taught college composition at Howard Community College, creative writing courses for the Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth, and Tfilah and Judaics classes for third and fourth grade at her local synagogue.
Nimrod Dweck is an Israeli activist, author, poet, and entrepreneur. His debut fantasy novel, “The Two Constants,” was published in 2019, and his stories and poems have appeared in various magazines, including Yad Mizrah. Currently, he is working on his second book as a member of PJ Library’s Sephardic Stories initiative. Beyond writing, Dweck has a background as a rapper, releasing several albums with different bands. He launched and led Beta, an innovation incubator backed by Paramount Global, and currently teaches marketing at Reichman University. Additionally, he leads Darkenu, one of Israel’s largest grassroots movements, which he co-founded, and provides business development consulting for startups in education, entertainment, games, and AI.
http://dweck.co.il/
Living in Givatayim, Israel, married + 2
Om Green is a Jewish feminist poet, artist, and essayist living in the Southeast United States with her family. Disabled since 2023, her work offers a transformative midrash on pain, desire, exile, and the experience of living in a Jewish body. She publishes her disability-focused writing on Substack at Plundering (plundering.substack.com). She is the founder of The Pomegranate Tent Collective. Her work also appears on Ritualwell.
Leslie Grollman’s work appears in Minyan Magazine, Emerge Literary Journal, ballast, pidgeonholes, Psaltery & Lyre, Cordite Poetry Review, bath magg, Sweet Lit, Moist, Writing Utopia 2020 Anthology, and elsewhere. Leslie earned an MSc Creative Writing, Poetry, with Distinction, from the University of Edinburgh in 2020 at age 70. She currently lives in Berlin where she writes and paints at the Berlin Art Institute.
Sonya Schneider is a Northwest poet and playwright with San Diego roots. Her poems can be found or are forthcoming in Rattle, Salamander, The Penn Review, Tar River, Potomac Review, Rust & Moth, MINYAN, Moon City Review, SWWIM, Whale Road Review and elsewhere. She has been a finalist for New Letters Patricia Cleary Miller Award, Raleigh Review’s Laux & Millar Poetry Prize and Atlanta Review’s International Poetry Contest. A graduate of Stanford and Pacific University’s MFA in Poetry, she lives in Seattle with her family.
Poet, essayist, translator and Fulbright Scholar, Rachel Neve-Midbar’s collection Salaam of Birds was chosen by Dorothy Barresi for the Patricia Bibby First Book Prize and was published by Tebot Bach in January 2020. She is also the author of the chapbook, What the Light Reveals (Tebot Bach, 2014, winner of The Clockwork Prize). Rachel’s work has appeared in Blackbird, Prairie Schooner, Grist and Georgia Review as well as other publications and anthologies. Her awards include the Crab Orchard Review Richard Peterson Prize, The Passager Prize, and nominations for The Pushcart Prize. Rachel is also the co-editor of Stained: an anthology of creative writing about menstruation (Querencia Press, July 2023) and her scholarly work Thought and New Language in the Menstrual Poem is due out from Palgrave MacMillan in 2026. Rachel earned her PhD from The University of Southern California, where her research concerned menstruation in contemporary poetry. She is currently a Fulbright Post Doc in Israel translating the poems of Holocaust poet Abba Kovner. Rachel is also the Poetry Editor at Judith Magazine. More at rachelnevemidbar.com
Susan Michele Coronel lives in New York City. Her first full-length collection, ”In the Needle, A Woman,” won the 2024 Donna Wolf Palacio Poetry Prize, and is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press this summer. A two-time Pushcart nominee, she has had poems published in numerous journals including MOM Egg Review, Minyan, Of the Book, Spillway 29, Redivider, and One Art. In 2023, she won the Massachusetts Poetry Festival’s First Poem Award. Versions of her book were named finalists for Harbor Editions’ Laureate Prize (2021), the 42 Miles Press Poetry Award (2023), the C&R Press Poetry Award (2023), and the Louise Bogan Award (2024). She is an intermediate level student of Yiddish. Find out more about Susan and her work at www.susanmichelecoronel.com.
Zeeva Bukai was born in Israel and raised in New York City. Her poetry and stories have appeared in the JBC Witness Series, Judith, Quartet, McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, Image Journal, December and elsewhere. The Anatomy of Exile, published by Delphinium Books, is her first novel. She lives in Brooklyn with her family. zeevabukai.com
RUTH Traubner KESSLER is an Israeli American poet born in Poland whose work focuses on place, displacement and memory. Her publications include the chapbook Fire Ashes Wings, and over 80 poems in journals and anthologies. A full-length collection is forthcoming in 2025. Her poems have been set to music, featured in concerts and made into an artist book. Awards include NYSCA/NYFA grants, and Yaddo, MacDowell and VCCA fellowships. She lives in New York City and Rochester, NY.
Stewart Florsheim was born in New York City, the son of a Holocaust survivor and a refugee from Hitler’s Germany. He was the editor of Ghosts of the Holocaust, an anthology of poetry by children of Holocaust survivors (Wayne State University Press, 1989). He wrote the poetry chapbook, The Girl Eating Oysters (2River, 2004). In 2005, Stewart won the Blue Light Book Award for The Short Fall From Grace (Blue Light Press, 2006). His collection, A Split Second of Light, was published by Blue Light Press in 2011 and received an Honorable Mention in the San Francisco Book Festival, honoring the best books published in the Spring of 2011. Stewart’s new collection, Amusing the Angels, won the Blue Light Book Award in 2022.
Steve Pollack advised local governments, directed an affordable housing co-op, built hospitals, science labs and public schools. Poetry found him later. His work has been included in Poetica Magazine, Schuylkill Valley Journal and Mukoli-The Magazine for Peace. His debut chapbook, “L’dor Vador–From Generation to Generation”, was published by Finishing Line Press. “December 26, 1960” will be re-printed in Keystone: Contemporary Poets on Pennsylvania, by Penn State University Press, the anthology forthcoming in May 2025. He volunteers on the One Book One Jewish Community advisory team sponsored by Gratz College and sings bass with Nashirah: the Jewish Chorale of Philadelphia.
Rachel R. Baum is the editor of Funeral and Memorial Service Readings Poems and Tributes (McFarland, 1999). Her poems have appeared in Raven’s Perch, The Phare, OneArt, Plainsongs, Chronogram, Jewish Literary Journal,The Rumpus, New Verse News, and others. She is the author of the long-running blog BARK! Confessions of a Dog Trainer. Her poetry chapbook Richard Brautigan’s Concussion was published by Bottlecap Press in 2023. Cowboy Jamboree Press published How to Rob a Convenience Store in 2024. Rachel is the founder of the Saratoga Peace Pod, a group of crafters who create warm items for people in crisis. For more information, visit https://www.rachelrbaum.net.
Eric Raanan Fischman’s first book, “Mordy Gets Enlightened,” was published through The Little Door in 2017 and reissued by Turnsol Editions in 2021. Works on Jewish themes have appeared in Minyan Magazine, The Mid-Atlantic Review, and East Window Journal, and he has also had poems in Bombay Gin, Twenty Bellows, the Boulder Weekly Newspaper, and more. He was one of two winners of Denver Quarterly’s 2023 Poetry Broadside Competition, with 60 copies letterpressed and a facsimile reprinted in the journal. He’s taught for a variety of Colorado-based organizations, including Arapahoe Community College, Crestone Poemfest, the Firehouse Arts Center, and Beyond Academia. He currently curates the Boulder/Denver metro poetry calendar at boulderpoetryscene.com. For more, visit ericraananfischman.com.
Lee Frankel-Goldwater is a teacher, traveler, and co-creator of the Writers Block Poetry Collective in Boulder. His poems have been published by South Broadway Press, the Boulder Poetry Scene, and the Daily Camera. As a proud member of the Naropa Disembodied Poetics lineage, Lee’s mission is to uncover unseen facets of the human spirit while inspiring new generations of artistic wanderers. His next big works are ‘Lily in a Codebox: Seeking AI’s Poetic Voice’ a book on the craft of cyborg poetics, and ‘Turn Off the Lights Goodnight’ a book of environmental dreamtime stories for kids.
Samantha Landau is an academic, classical vocalist, translator, and writer who resides in Tokyo, Japan, where she has lived for nearly two decades. She works as a professor at The University of Tokyo and is a co-founder of the Gothic in Asia Association. She is currently co-editing a volume of essays on poetry and the Gothic. Her poems have appeared in
Judith Magazine, Dust Poetry Magazine, and The Coop: A Poetry Cooperative. She has work forthcoming in Tiny Spoon and The Lullwater Review.
Julie Brandon is a poet, playwright and short story writer. Her work has appeared in Bewildering Stories, Corner Bar Magazine, Awakenings Review, Bright Flash Literary Review, Poetica Magazine, Flash Phantom, Witcraft, Rio Grande Valley Anthology 2024, Fresh Words, Mini Pay Review and others. Her plays have been produced in the U.S and Great Britain. Several of Julie’s short plays can be heard on Theatrical Shenanigans, RubySky Productions and Broken Arts Entertainment podcasts. Her poetry collection, “My Tears, Like Rain” is available on Amazon. Julie lives near Chicago, IL.
Susan Comninos is a widely published poet and author of a recent book of poems, Out of Nowhere (Stephen F. Austin Univ. Press/Texas A&M, 2022). Her creative work has appeared in the Harvard Review Online, Rattle, The Common, Prairie Schooner and North American Review, among others. Since 2017, she has taught writing to undergraduates at Siena College, The College of St. Rose, and SUNY Albany, as well as diverse groups of adults in the community. “Wild Joy of Receiving” is the title poem of her current book manuscript. She lives in upstate New York. You can find her book at the following link https://www.tamupress.com/book/9781622882373/out-of-nowhere/
Katy Z. Allen is a lover of the more-than-human world, rabbi of an outdoor congregation, co-founder of a Jewish climate organization, eco-chaplain, and writer since the age of eight. Her poetry has appeared in New Verse News, and her poetic book, A Tree of Life: A Story in Word, Image, and Text was published by Strong Voices Publishing.